Fall From Grace on the rise, thanks to reality TV

Published 10:00 pm, Thursday, August 9, 2007

Tryg Littlefield doesn't usually watch reality television, yet a new reality TV show might propel him and his Seattle-based band into mainstream success.

A $1 million recording contract is within earshot for Fall From Grace, a serious contender against nine other bands on "BODOG Battle of the Bands," which airs Wednesday nights on Fuse. If you have digital Comcast, you get this channel. If not, free episodes are online.

"We actually have a shot at this and it freaks the crap out of us," said Littlefield, the band's lead singer.

They came home from a separate seven-week tour to The Showbox on Wednesday night, where they screened an episode of the show and then roared into play after letting four other bands warm up the crowd of more than 400.

The figure playing the Simon Cowell role of "notorious judge" on this show is none other than the Sex Pistols' Johnny Rotten, who clearly relishes being the one who tells it exactly like it is.

But for a band that gave up their day jobs to live mostly out of their tour van, a band whose guitarist was clinically dead for 45 minutes after an auto accident, there's not much they can't handle.

"Everybody in life has a point of utopia and then things happen to knock you off that soapbox," said Littlefield, 30. "It's up to us to get back up."

So for Fall From Grace, the challenges on the show were nothing. Their wins: coming up with a song for a stripper in one show and in another, hitting 16 bars in a row, eating each bar's food in 22 minutes, then getting up to sing a song. Bassist "Big Ken" Olson, 29, also lived up to the rock 'n' roll lifestyle, getting arrested in Las Vegas for obstructing traffic when he stopped a Hummer on the Strip.

The label they're vying for is BODOG Music, a new label that has signed Wu-Tang Clan and Billy Idol, one of several companies under the BODOG Entertainment Group. The label's A&R guy is Johnny Zazula, the former record-shop owner who gave Metallica its first big break.

The big boss behind BODOG is Calvin Ayre, a high-profile billionaire who has made the cover of Forbes and was on People magazine's Hottest Bachelors list but who stays away from the U.S. because his main source of income is from online gambling, to the tune of more than $7 billion in wagers in 2005. He also dabbles in ultimate fighting.

The members of Fall From Grace had no idea what they were getting into when they jokingly submitted one of their songs to what they thought was an online battle of the bands contest.

Then they were invited to play live, beating 50 other Seattle bands and winning a trip to Cleveland, where the nationwide pool of 7,500 auditioning bands had been whittled to 20. Of those 20, 10 would be chosen for the show. The show completed filming in March.

The 10 bands toured on five buses for nine weeks, hitting cities such as Las Vegas, Los Angeles and Memphis, Tenn., for the tapings. The show began airing this summer and the finale is scheduled for Sept. 5. So far, Fall From Grace has escaped the chopping block.

"Once we saw how much money they were putting into it, we started taking it seriously. Once the cameras came out, we knew this was a lot bigger than we realized," Littlefield said.

Watching the show on MySpace got 13-year-old Taylor Bogdanovich hooked on Fall From Grace. She became such a fan that she persuaded her parents to plan a vacation around The Showbox performance. The family drove 18 hours from home in Los Angeles to spend a week in Seattle, with the show being the highlight of the week.

"On the back of my basketball schedule, I have a list of things to do and right there next to the Space Needle and Pike Place Market is the show," she said.

Always wanted to be a star

Littlefield's parents said their son knew from an early age what he liked and what he wanted to do. Big supporters of his career, they were at the show Wednesday.

"He told us he was going to be a rock star when he was 15," said Bob Littlefield of Port Orchard.

"We said, 'No, you're not, you're going to get a job, a house,' " said Littlefield's stepmother, Jodi, who raised him on Vashon Island. After awhile they changed their tune.

Like other shows, "Battle" pits the bands against each other in front of three judges. Besides Rotten, there's Bif Naked (also on the BODOG label) and Cult guitarist Billy Duffy. While they tried to listen to the judges' advice, after a few episodes, Fall From Grace couldn't take it anymore.

"We were angry, but we always kept our cool, we didn't say anything," Littlefield said. "After L.A., we didn't care. We did what we always wanted to do." But the band realized, "The judges were hardest on the bands they wanted to succeed."

On the show, Fall From Grace is the face of Seattle post-punk rock: pale, covered in tattoos, and clothed in black T-shirts. Drummer and former Army National Guardsman Kenny Bates, 23, stands out with his mohawk. But behind the scenes, they're normal guys who believe in their resilience. Together for three years, they've put 40,000 miles on their van in the past year and a half.

Before their band formed, guitarist Brian Olson -- Ken Olson's older brother -- came close to dying. Actually, he did die for 45 minutes, the victim of a drunken driver hitting his car head-on in November 1999. But he slowly learned to play the guitar again. These days the 30-year-old is swinging it around his body like nothing ever happened.

The title track from the band's self-released CD, "Covered in Scars," is about Brian's brush with death.

One of their fans, Littlefield's dental hygienist, has been so moved by their stories, she has become their volunteer press coordinator.

"I've never met a group more dedicated to what they want," said Patti Chambers of Indianola. "They've sacrificed jobs and security for their dream. Even when they're so different from me, they inspire me to go for what I want."